So, how to do it? We don’t really know … yet. But we think we should have a home base, an axis to pivot around, something more than a storage closet. And that makes things complicated.

When you have nothing, no home base, you don’t have to pay rent, which is a huge advantage. But taking a break from travel becomes difficult and accessing whatever stuff you don’t have on you gets tricky. A home base is the ideal setup, we think. Something small, close to an airport, cheap. Cue the brainstorming.

New York obviously makes some sense. Lisa’s wanted to live in New York forever. From an airport standpoint, New York is awesome. There are flights everywhere. I just looked and we could fly to Moscow for all of February for $450 or Bermuda for under $400. Those are awesome deals. We could sell our car, get a tiny place in Queens, maybe make it work. But New York is still damn expensive, even in Queens, and while we like New York, it’s not exactly where we want to be in all of our “off” time. But in New York, it’s dead easy to get everywhere else.

We want to be in Durango, honestly, but Durango is not even close to a tenth as airport-friendly as New York. Flying into and out of Durango would be a bear. The best-deal, most-accessible city in the Southwest is probably Las Vegas. Las Vegas is very Death Valley-friendly (and tax-friendly), but Las Vegas is Las Vegas. Or there’s Phoenix … but Phoenix is Phoenix. Why can’t JFK airport move to Bisbee?

We also like Boise, but the airport scene there isn’t great either, and it’s beyond the extreme northern reaches of the Southwest. Still, I’d live there. Mountains, man.

If we scratch the western mountains from the equation, there’s Boston. Boston is almost as airport-awesome as New York, it’s just not in the west. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s LA. And it’s not that I have anything against LA, I just don’t think I can live there. I do like Seattle, but, well, Seattle isn’t close to family, the Southwest, or the equator. Boy, Seattle is great though.

Maybe the answer is an RV. I don’t know if you can get mail in an RV, but maybe we could work that out. Or a boat. We should definitely have a sailboat again. I’m just not sure that leaving all our worldly possessions on a boat while we travel the world is the best idea. Boats like to sink, get commandeered.

The ideal is a smallish apartment, on the top-floor of a building (less chance of break-ins) in a walkable downtown near a big airport with free parking for a boat (and a 4×4) within a short drive of either Death Valley or Zion NP and both of our families (Milwaukee, Kansas City, Syracuse). I have no idea where that place is. It’s almost Chicago, but it’s not going to be Chicago. It’s almost a lot of places. Maybe it’s in France.

Any ideas?

Read Our Book:

Read about Paul fighting off a charging bear with a Fat Tire beer can (kinda made up). And this: Lisa meeting a talking piece of poo in the middle of the desert (maybe that was dehydration). And we realize that the meaning of life is wrapped up in a motel waffle (this is probably true).